Awakening

Deep blackness.  The kind you lose yourself in.  A darkness that doesn't end.  Flows in and out of you, filling up your lungs and your guts, dragging you down and consuming you.  Then piercing white light and all-consuming pain.  Confusion and terror.

Where was I?  I pushed my hands down through the darkness, felt it swirling through my fingers like a tangible thing.  My fingers dug in, through a thin layer of silt and god knows what else, scraping across the rough surface of concrete.  Raw pain from exposed nail-beds scrabbling on concrete.  Then I pushed, and my head broke the surface.

I could feel the grit and the sand in my mouth - could feel dirty water flowing up and ought of my lungs.  Someone was coughing out what sounded like a wheezing death rattle and trying to choke out a scream.  It took me a while to realize it was me.

I knelt in the shallow water wretching for a while.  My mouth was full of something gritty and bitter.  Sewer-smell everwhere.  I rose to my knees, rolling my tongue around in my mouth to try to get the grit out.  Felt a jagged landscape of shattered bone where my teeth ought to be.  Tasted a little blood.  Someone had ruined the inside of my mouth.  The rest of me felt like hell, too.  My clothes were a sopping wet torn wreck of stained rags.

I staggered to my feet.  Patted my pockets, hoping to find some clue as to what was going on.  My fingers came across an edge - I traced it and felt a rectangular shape.  I pulled a thin moleskine notebook out, eagerly flipping it open.  My eyes were accommodated to the dark.  The first few pages were written on, but the muddy water had soaked them, turning the ink into unrecognizable blotches.  There was some fresh, blank paper toward the middle that has escaped most of the water.  It was empty, like my mind.  The thing that was troubling me was that basic information like my own name wasn't coming back to me yet.  Back to the pockets.  No keys, no pocket knife.  Most importantly, no wallet, no cash, and no identification.  Looks like I picked a bad time to be a minimalist.

I took a look around.  It was dark, and I was standing in the shallow end of a retention pond in King's Row.  Waste and detritus were floating around everywhere.  Looks like the kind of place a scumbag gang might try to dump a body.  I felt a fury welling up inside me - a slow burn at first, but building steam like a freight train.  Gangs.  The PPD were a piss-poor excuse for a bunch of hall monitors the way things were going in this city.  I might not be able to remember my own name, but at least I could remember what I thought of bottom-feeders. Pain shot through my hands - without realizing it I'd starting cracking my knuckles, and apparently they were sore.  At least I put up a fight.

I walked up the embankment toward the chain-link fence surrounding the retention pond at the top of the rise.  I grabbed on, and with practiced ease swung my body over the fence, coming to a smooth and quiet landing.  Apparently I'd done this before.

I walked into the night time streets of King's Row, determined to find some answers.